Before Thursday, many people in America had expressed concern about Joe Biden’s increasing age and his fitness to run the White House.
But to say that this concern has ended among the people after the first debate between the candidates in connection with the presidential election last night would be the biggest understatement of this year.
When President Joe Biden came to the debate, the standards set for him were kept very low, but he did not live up to that either. He was stopping while speaking, he was stammering and seemed very unclear.
In the middle of the debate, the Biden campaign told reporters that the President was suffering from a cold – this may have been an attempt to justify his faltering voice, or it may be true – but it sounded like an excuse.
For 90 minutes, Biden’s tongue kept slipping. Some of his answers were such that they did not make any sense. He seemed to be losing his thoughts at times. Biden ended one answer by saying, “We will finally beat Medicare.” Medicare is a government-run health plan for the elderly. Biden’s former communications director Kate Bedingfield was on CNN’s show immediately after the debate and said, “There is no doubt that this was not a good debate for Joe Biden.” She said Biden had to prove that he had the energy and stamina, but he failed to do so. As the debate progressed, like a boxer hanging from the ring, Biden began to launch strong attacks on his opponent Trump, some of which failed but some hit the mark and led to an angry tone from the former president. At the very beginning of the debate, CNN moderators raised issues that are very important to voters – the economy and immigration – polls show that people trust Trump’s arguments more on these issues – an obvious concern for President Biden.
After Joe Biden’s response on this issue, Trump said, “I don’t understand what he said at the end.”
The entire debate can be understood from this answer of Trump. This was the gist of the entire debate.
Former President Trump performed quite disciplined and well.
He avoided the kind of interruption and aggression that weakened his first debate in the year 2020 and whenever possible, he was turning the debate around and attacking Biden.
He was making claims that were not based on facts and were clearly false, but despite this Biden was unable to answer them properly.
For example, when the issue of abortion came up, Trump repeatedly called it ‘Democrat extremism’. He falsely claimed that Democrats support abortion after the baby is born.
When it comes to abortion, this issue weighs heavily on Trump and Republicans, proving to be a weakness for them.
In 2022, the US Supreme Court overturned the 50-year-old decision in the Roe vs. Wade case – which legalized abortion and said that the Constitution gives a pregnant woman the right to make a decision regarding abortion.
The US Supreme Court overturned it two years ago. But when Biden was talking about this issue, he could have scored good points but Biden simply said, “What you did was very bad.”
Soon after the debate ended, Vice President Kamala Harris admitted that the presidential debate had a ‘slow start’ but she said that Biden ended strongly. This is overly optimistic, but yes, as the debate progressed, Biden gradually picked up the pace but it was not enough.
One such rhetoric took place between Biden and Trump which is worth remembering. Biden mentioned Trump’s case in which he was convicted of paying money to hide his relationship with an adult film star.
Regarding this, Biden said, “Trump’s morality is like that of a street cat that does anything.”
In response to this, Trump said, “I did not have sex with a porn star.”
Trump also appeared on the backfoot while talking about the attack on the US Capitol on January 6. He initially tried to talk about Biden’s record by diverting the question asked about his responsibility for the Capitol Hill riots, but this time Biden did not let him do so and kept him on the issue.
Biden said, “Trump incited people to go to the Capitol. He sat idle for three hours, while his colleagues kept appealing to him to do something but he did nothing.”
Trump repeatedly ignored the question in which he was asked whether he would accept the results of the 2024 election?
This is the earliest debate in the modern history of America, because Biden’s campaign group wanted it. One reason was that they wanted to draw people’s attention to Trump’s ‘controversial tenure’.
But now people are talking about Biden’s performance in the debate.
Biden’s team organized the debate much earlier than the time it usually takes place and one reason behind this could be that this would give him more time to recover from a weak performance. Perhaps this will give him some relief after Thursday night.
